Miss Emily's Son
by HaraBarbie
Summary: As the people of Milwaukee spread rumors of Vlad's shady past, timing could not be better when Danny comes to Wisconsin in hopes of studying the man to improve his powers and Vlad sees an opportunity to use Danny to clear his name. Please read and review. No major OC.


"Dude, I'm starving," the boy wearing the red beret wined, clutching his belly with chocolate hands. "Can't we call it a day? I think we've done enough detective work."

The boy known as 'dude' sat behind the wheel of his father's homemade vehicle, darkened in irritation at the ceaseless complaining of his best friend, Tucker, who seemed to have been hungry since the moment they'd left his home in Amity Park, despite the fact that they'd eaten at their favorite restaurant, the Nasty Burger, before leaving. The snacks Danny Fenton had stolen from the pantry and stuffed into his backpack now rested in Tucker's belly, and the Specter Speeder was riddled with the residual garbage. This seemed to put Danny on edge, because he was sitting on the leftover crumbs and the smell of salt-and-vinegar chips—oh why did I bring these, he would come to think—had given him a pounding headache. Tucker's seemingly needless wining did not help and Danny's hands had tightened on the Speeder's controls, the knuckles a milky white.

He had known Tuck long enough to grasp—if vaguely—how the boy he'd met in first grade and had since been inseparable could eat a weekend's worth of snacks in what was maybe two hours, and still feel hungry, at that; Tucker had told him many a time before how he had an iron belly, and could eat anything you handed to him—save vegetables, that was, because he seemed to be aiming to get scurvy. In fact, Danny had not seen his friend eat a vegetable since they'd first encountered one another and an assignment in class had been to eat broccoli and document what it tasted like (and that, Tucker had gotten an F on, because he could not keep it down). What was very perplexing to Danny, however, was the idea that Tucker could sit in the passenger seat beside him while he struggled to drive this strange vehicle when the task at hand was nothing less than completely serious; they were, after all, stalking his arch nemesis, Vlad Masters, in his hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Tucker seemed to not only believe that it was necessary to provide distraction to him while he tried to accomplish this daunting task, but distract him with something so trivial, at that. After all, the normal human being can go a month without food, and Danny thought that Tucker should know better; despite his frequent displays of inappropriate behavior to Danny, such as teasing him after a failed test or a rejection from a pretty girl, Tucker usually refrained from pushing it when he saw that his friend was especially upset or frustrated. Danny decided that he must be very bored now, as was the third member of their party, Sam Manson, and so becoming was he, but that did not lessen his irritation, because their excursion was not going as he planned.

Rather than be instilled with information that might better himself or his powers—or something that might cripple Vlad himself—Danny and his friends were provided with a rather surprisingly dull summary of what the children assumed to be his life outside tormenting them with his ghostly half, Plasmius, or trying in vain to conjure up the love of his mother. In coming here in the Specter Speeder early this Saturday morning, and having to almost drag his two best friends from the confines of their warm beds, Danny had been confident he would witness Vlad's evil—that which was not reserved for him—in the place he resided, perhaps given the opportunity to witness as Vlad used his powers and evicted them on someone other than himself and thus able to study them better. In doing so he hoped to improve his own powers, because he had found, and regrettably so, that he had many things to learn, especially in comparing himself to the man who had so suddenly come into his life but now seemed incredibly to shape it, for there was not an instance when in his ghost half in which he did not note how much better Vlad could do this or that and strove in vain to achieve this high caliber. Because he found it nearly impossible to study the well-dressed man as he fired glowing pink blasts at him, Danny decided it would be necessary to spend the weekend tracking Vlad Masters without his knowledge; there was, of course, another way to gain ghostly strength, but god knew that this prospect had frightened him and even disgusted him in its hideousness—he could have gone to Vlad and _asked _for help when his powers became too much to tackle on his own. But he wouldn't. And so he was here, with Tucker and Sam, who might have planned to sit through a trilogy of movies this afternoon but were suckers for adventure.

That, however, was their problem. They might have been expecting an exciting account of Vlad's life as he thrived with his ghost powers—rather, they got a not-so-enthralling anecdote of his life as the president of a successful cheese factory. Although this had been a rather amusing realization for the three children, it was certainly not enough placate their desire to reach inside him and unearth the information he held, and nor would his rather uninteresting conversations with those he stopped to chat with as he walked through town. Rather than watch as Vlad Plasmius paraded through town, firing blasts at random as Danny had expected, the man waved kindly to those who he came across, smiling with such uncharacteristic brightness, and to the boy the idea that someone could possess such undying evil but walk the streets and appear perfectly normal, someone your children would feel safe running into the arms of, was absolutely sickening—but it was also very earth-shattering, and for a moment Danny was enveloped with the realization that he was somehow wiser, for his world had become in that moment clearer, losing its sticky coating of sugary cotton candy that had, for so long, clouded his vision. He felt scared for all these unsuspecting people, and could not help but wonder what Vlad had done to those who had once inhabited these streets but were now lost in the memories of the next victims.

It was a rather unsettling idea that Vlad could be so well liked, but there was a moment in which Danny was struck with the realization that perhaps Vlad harbored hatred for none other than his father and himself, and reserved his powers solely for them. At least, it was safer to assume this, because it would preserve the lives of so many innocents in his mind and set him at ease. Perhaps, when not around he and his father, Vlad Plasmius was the happy-go-lucky man who ran a quaint cheese factory and donated money to children in need overseas. The kind of guy who gave out candy apples when mothers drove their children to his home on Halloween, who took kids on rides on his tractor or let them use his swimming pool. Everyone's favorite neighbor—some lonely guy who made up for the absence of children of his own and a wife in his life by being overly and almost suspiciously hospitable to the kids of the neighborhood…but Danny doubted it. To him, the idea that someone who was so ill-intentioned to the person for who he held a grudge could simply snap back and be filled with sunshine and happiness was something of a fairytale. Simply, if that hate was there, it was there, and while he might appear to be the type of guy you could visit for apple cider on your way home from school on a cold day, that hate was always present, and very cleverly masked. It was not a pleasant reality, but it was true. A part of him wanted to alert the town, but another part argued hatefully that doing so might only evoke the man's wrath and bring upon the town what might have stayed hidden, if not for him.

They had parked the Speeder in a field several miles from the city, and Danny flew them in the rest of the way. They spent what was perhaps an hour observing these monotone interactions between Vlad Masters and the people of Milwaukee, hidden in the shadows of alleyways from which they carefully peeked or ducked behind potted plants and most likely looking like complete fools to whoever saw them, until Vlad made his way back to the lot in front of the cheese factory where the driver of his limo was waiting for him. Danny ushered Sam and Tucker back to their vehicle—one that looked like a garbage can if you placed it next to the gorgeous black stretch limo Vlad owned—and they sped off in pursuit of Masters, trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible because they were not, after all, driving a minivan. In hindsight—such a trivial thing, really, but ever-present—Danny would speculate that returning to the Specter Speeder was a rather reckless move, because he could just as easily have flown a harmless distance from the limo with his friends safely clutched in his arms. Maybe he was worried that the Speeder would be discovered and hauled away, or something of that nature, or maybe the idea of a car chase excited him, but either way he now found himself racing after the car as if he had never learned to drive.

"Later, Tucker," he managed, glaring at the road ahead of him like a father who is immersed in his children's fighting and is desperately trying to retain control so he may drive, exercising unbelievable patience. They'd left the main stretch of road and were traveling along a strip of countryside, where they remained a long distance behind the sleek black limo, one which looked uncannily like a hearse in that afternoon's sun. "Let's just see where he's going and if it's another cheese factory we can go home."

"Come on, Danny," Tucker said. "I'm going to miss my three o'clock feeding!"

"You _just_ ate," Sam Manson interjected, crossing her slender arms over her chest and rolling her eyes in the same annoyance that had overcome Danny.

"Well, _just _was too long ago for me. I've told you guys about my stomach, and—"

"Yes, we know," the darkly clothed girl said cynically, rolling her eyes again and shaking her head in something like disgust. "You've got an iron stomach you need to keep nourished."

"That's right," Tucker said, nodding approvingly. "You know how I get when I don't have food. It's like I can't stop complaining when I get hungry. And my stomach is constantly growling, and you know I get bad gas, and—"

It was about all Danny could take, and his frustration at his seemingly wasted efforts, coupled with the intense headache and other physical discomfort—it was overly warm in the Speeder and they were all dripping with perspiration—seemed to push him over the edge. He had not been looking at the road as his best friends debated the capacity of Tucker's stomach—his eyes had been there, but his mind was away, consumed by the sound of their voices which grew louder and seemed to echo hollowly throughout the structure of his head—but as this thing, the cord that keeps one composed, broke into two, he turned his head to them and snapped, "Would you two shut up?"

There was only a small moment before the Speeder, which had accelerated as Danny's foot came down harshly on the gas pedal, crashed into the tail end of the stopped limo; their breaths left them as the vehicle came to a sudden halt, but if there was one thing Danny's father had done right in his career of mostly useless and defective inventions, it was installing airbags in the Speeder.

Danny thanked god for that, feeling an overwhelming sense of luck and blessedness wash over him…but as Vlad came into view, unscathed and smiling, he would curse god's name, and be once again reminded how truly unjust the entirety of his life was.


End file.
